Home / Uncategorized / More Girls to learn critical life and career finance skills as the Council for Economic Education and Invest in Girls merge for greater impact

More Girls to learn critical life and career finance skills as the Council for Economic Education and Invest in Girls merge for greater impact

POSTED: July 31, 2019 | BY: Alan

Girls, who too-often struggle with personal finance and are
wary of financial careers, will be getting a needed boost in their classrooms
nationwide, thanks to a merger of two nonprofit financial education
organizations: the Council for Economic Education (CEE) and Invest in Girls
(IIG). The SeaChange-Lodestar Fund for Nonprofit Collaboration supported this
effort.

By working together, the two organizations will expand their
efforts with students and schools, community groups, corporations and
foundations to provide and advocate for financial literacy programming.

“America’s schools spend billions of dollars helping
children master reading and math, and then far too often send them out into the
world lacking a basic skill to prosper in life: understanding personal
finance,” said Nan J. Morrison, CEE president and CEO. “By merging our two
strong programs, we will be able to have a broader impact on the futures of
America’s young women.”

When
it comes to personal finance, classroom teaching is often a missing ingredient;
only one-third of the states require a personal finance class for graduation,
according to CEE’s biennial Survey of the States, which monitors our
country’s progress in this area.

“Girls especially need a safe environment for asking
questions and taking chances in order to learn,” said Betsy Kelder, executive director
of Invest in Girls. “With the merger, our programs will now touch the lives of
even more girls and women, teaching them skills for good financial decision
making and accelerating change in the landscape of America’s financial industry.”

Strong female role models in corporate board rooms and
finance offices also are in short supply, Morrison and Kelder noted.

Together, CEE and IIG will continue and expand programs to
develop generations of financially literate girls and change the way that girls
interact with money. The merger allows CEE to provide additional tools to young
women through its network of affiliated partners across the country. This includes
IIG programs that bring women in finance to schools and girls on industry field
trips to bolster students’ personal finance knowledge and encourage career
paths. The programs are targeted to high school girls, opening to them a world
of budgeting and credit, investments and savings, taxes and insurance.

“The fact that IIG was just
for girls and taught by a woman made it a very comfortable learning environment
for me,” said Keyona Duncan, who participated in an IIG program at a
Boston-area high school. “The teachers and volunteers were role models to us.”

She went on to study
business management and accounting in college.

“Learning about personal
finance taught me to be more assertive. I no longer felt like I had to hold
back as a female,” Duncan said. “My mom told me she learned about finances on
her own—as an adult, the hard way.”

Knowledge of personal finance provides the tools for children to
set goals and create lives around the horizon line of their choice. For
70 years, CEE has helped teachers bring personal finance to classrooms through
free teacher professional development and classroom resources, online and
offline, for all students in grades K through 12. CEE also runs the National
Economics Challenge and National Personal Finance Challenge and is rolling out
Family Financial Literacy nights across the country.

IIG’s main office will remain in Boston and operate as a
program of New York City-based CEE. Staff from both organizations will continue
in their current roles.

The Council for Economic Education’s mission is to teach K-12 students
about economics and personal finance so that they can make better decisions for
themselves, their families and their communities. We carry out our mission by
providing resources and training to K-12 educators and have done so for 70
years. Nearly 2/3 of the teachers CEE reaches in person are in low- and
moderate-income schools.

About Invest in Girls:

Invest in Girls partners with corporations and finance industry volunteers to
provide classroom workshops and role models, to open doors to girls in the form
of industry trips, and to work tirelessly to support IIG’s mission: to ensure
that all girls have access to a financial education and to cultivate a
generation of financially literate girls. Information about IIG’s programs is
available online here.